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What practical problems continue to make feminism necessary, what theoretical issues continue to trouble feminism , and how can feminism justly inhabit a relation to other, similarly critical projects?
Feminism persists as an important political project. The philosophical tradition houses some extraordinary insights, the power of which should be harnessed for feminist and critical political purposes, whatever the original intentions of their authors. Being Gendered pairs feminist and philosophical discourse so as to illuminate those aspects of human experience that coincide with issues of feminist concern: the everyday personal lives of embodied human beings who exist in the world with others and differently confront issues of appearance, sexuality, family life, gender identity, and aging; the cultural, historical forces that precede and shape personal life, habituating in us certain gender-specific behaviours and behavioural expectations; the impersonal domains-nature, law, and the economy-that circumscribe possibilities for human development behind the scenes; and the activities and others by which we are carried beyond our everyday experience, and even beyond the interpretive framework of feminism. Being Gendered is a project of phenomenological description, revealing how gendered experience exists in tension with what experience projects as its own immanent norms. A guide especially for new scholars of philosophy, it will offer its readers a unique vision of philosophy as a powerful tool for sorting through some of the pressing political issues of the present.
